Using concepts covered in EDCURSEC700 and EDPROF741, give a selective and critical

account of your educational history. Examine how your own positioning shaped the kind of
educational experiences you encountered.
The essential contention of this educational autobiography is that ones ethnic location is a key
determinant in ones likely enfranchisement and achievement in the educational sector. In service to
that view, this essay will: first, posit that Pakeha ethnic identity has been invisibilised, and propagated
as normative in the educational sector; secondly, track this invisibilisation and normalisation across
my secondary schooling experience (at a private, Decile 10, predominantly Pakeha school).
Furthermore, this autobiography will contend that this experience shaped my values and beliefs
(regarding education, and otherwise) and primed me to unknowingly continue in the subjugation of
other ethnic groups.1
The Social Context: Pakeha Cultural Invisibility
During the course of my secondary schooling, the academic contention was (and had been) that
Pakeha lacked the requisite ethnic boundaries (Waitere-Ang & Adams, 2005, p. 104) or markers
(Nagel, 1994, p. 145) to justify a claim to ethnic titling. Jesson (1986) claimed Pakeha culture was
insufficiently profound to justify a claim to ethnic status; the groups claims to culture were merely
trivial aspects of national culture like jandals, kiwifruit and pavlova (Bell, 2004, p. 131) or else
appropriated aspects of Maori, or New Zealands colonising nations, cultures (p. 15). Similarly,
Pearson (1989) contended that Pakeha inability to settle on an ethnic title (with various members of
the group espousing a preference for New Zealand European, Pakeha or New Zealander) is
symptomatic of a failure of collective self-consciousness required to justify titling as an ethnic group
(p. 65-66).
The issue is, such claims are false Pakeha are an ethnic group, possessed and engaged in the
enactment of norms, values and ways of behaviour (hereafter aspects). 2 A failure to recognise this
reality is critical where Pakeha are not considered an ethnic group, their aspects rare left in a
vacuum. The logic follows: if Pakeha norms are not ethnic (positioned to the group) then they must
be universal (Moon, 1999, p. 179), and thus rightly and projected upon the nation (Webber,
McKinley & Hattie, 2013, p. 50; Mitcalfe, 2008, p. 13).
1 Of course, ethnic positioning is not the solitary influence or determinant of ones educational
experience for the sake of a more focussed examination, it will be the only component examined
here.
2 The claim that Pakeha lack culture, for instance, is flawed the arguably trivial nature of Pakeha
culture is merely a symptom of its recency (Keith, 1987, p. 76). Equally, while Pakeha may lack
collective consciousness as to titling, they are collectively conscious in other ways for instance, in
the perception they are other or distinct from other ethnic groups (Wimmer, 2008, p. 982).

This positioning informed many early incarnations of teacher training many of my teachers were
likely trained under a scheme that encouraged to be objective, neutral and a-political (Hanly,
2009, p. 1) given the invisibilisation of Pakeha norms, these norms came to define these
requirements. As such, Pakeha aspects became the primary informant of appropriate curricular,
pedagogical and assessment approaches (Metge, 1990, p. 3; Hemara, 2000, p. 40).
How Did This Ideological and Social Context Influence My Schooling?
During my schooling, I had no inkling that my education was tailored to my own cultural location (as
a Pakeha student). Yet, in hindsight, a number of norms, values and ways of being were embedded
across Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment opportunities, which reflected my own ways of
knowing and being, while alienating those of others.
The most obvious instance of pre-eminence, dominance and universality being accorded to the Pakeha
voice was in the taught Curriculum. In English, for instance, (visual and literary) texts covered were
exclusively those of white cultural identities. 3 Texts were justified as relevant on the basis of their
universal nature, applicable to all audiences a notion of normativity in the Pakeha literary canon,
which is also enshrined in Ministry of Education (1994) and NZQA (2007; 2010; 2011) directions as
to appropriate texts for study.
More importantly, however, the Pakeha voice informed the philosophical approach to education that
permeated the school, and justified all lower-level decision making.
That philosophy established hierarchies of knowledge on the basis of a Cartesian and Platonic model
of the self in which the highest realisation of humanity is the attainment of rationality (where the
self is ruled by reason) (Marshall & Peters, 1993, p. 38). This dualistic approach to the mind and
body4 resulted in an educational approach, which sought the attainment of distanced rationality
(Bleazby, 2013, p. 20), and thus prioritised disciplines based on principles of abstractness, rationality,
theory and cognition (while denigrating disciplines based on imagination, emotionality and
application).5 STEM subjects were esteemed over the Humanities (English, History and Economics),
which, in turn, were considered more respectable than the Arts (Drama, Visual Arts) and Applied
3 Studied texts included: Z for Zachariah, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, The Dolls
House, Never Let Me Go, The Handmaids Tale, Oryx and Crake, Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and
Juliet, Far From Heaven, My Life As A Dog, Strictly Ballroom, V for Vendetta, and The History Boys.
4 Notably, distinct from those of other cultures. Kaupapa Maori philosophy, for instance, is premised
on a critique of dualistic thinking for instance, the concept of Hauora suggests that ones academic
self cannot be considered separately from ones emotional, social and spiritual self (Walker, 1996, p.
41).
5 Maori education, by contrast, gives creativity parity with knowledge (Ministry of Education,
2005, p. 5).

(Physical Education, Applied Technologies). Individual subjects operated as microcosms of this

hierarchy too in English, assessment opportunities which relied on rational argument as their tenet
(such as Seminar Reports and Delivery of Persuasive Oral Texts) were prioritised over those which
required self-expression or performance (such as Static Images or A Dramatic Enactment of a
Shakespeare Scene).
Further, that philosophy established that the purpose of knowledge was instrumental a means to
individual competitiveness and satisfaction of ones needs in the marketplace. 6 For instance, when
deciding between University majors (between Law and Architecture), my school careers advisor
directed me as follows: Law is better respected, and better paid. Disengagement, or poor
performance in class, was threatened with the prospect of lesser social status: do you want to end up
flipping burgers under the golden arches?
How Did My Schooling Experience Shape My Knowledge And Experiences?
Foucault (1972) argued that education transforms societyWhat is an education system, after all, if
not a ritualization of the world; if not a qualification of some fixing of roles for speakers; if not the
constitution of a diffuse doctrinal group (p. 227). Indeed, I have been formed by my educational
experience.
First, the invisibilised aspects of my schooling experience shaped the easy enfranchisement and
success I found in schooling. Since individuals socio-cultural location frames their values and beliefs,
the way in which they interact with the world, and the information and skills to which they attribute
importance (Solano-Flores & Nelson Barber, 2001, p. 533) students perform best where they perceive
compatibility between their culture and their learning environment (Mahuika & Bishop, 2011, p. 189).
Since my culture and education were congruent, I was readily engaged and performed well at the
same time, my peers of other ethnic groupings were alienated (and, as such, often disengaged) by its
lack of parity with their own socio-cultural location (Hanly, 2007, p. 150; Greenwood & Te Aka,
2009). In this sense, I have enjoyed educational ethnic privilege cashing in, each day, on assets to
which I was oblivious (McIntosh, 1988, p. 1; hooks, 1997, p. 175).
Secondly, due to the invisibilisation of my advantage, I have accrued the belief that my own
educational achievements are my solitary work (except as informed by the efforts of individual agents
such as my family, or teachers), in a meritocratic education system ignorant, entirely, of the
structural bias that has aided me (Black and Stone, 2005, p. 243). As such, I have perpetuated the
damaging narrative (not explicitly, but implicitly, in my attitude to learning and my mantra work
hard, and youll succeed!) that disparities between my achievement and that of others was (and is)
6 As opposed to the Maori imperative for knowledge as holistic well-being of oneself and ones
society (Kaupapa Maori, 2016, p. 80).

due to individual factors personal blame, bad luck, or lack of hard work (Robinson, 1999) the very
same narrative that acts to suppress the achievement of those whose attainments are suppressed by a
prejudicial system.
Finally7, on the basis my internalisation of the Cartesian and Platonic philosophy that knowledge
and understanding are the highest order of human attainment, I developed a belief that I had a right
to investigate or know any matter I chose. When I entered University and became aware of
structural imbalances of power and capital, and diversities of human experience I expected to be
able to demand of the Other an account of their experience, and be met with acquiescence. Indeed, it
was a shock that the Other was not always to readily passivized for study (Jones, 1999, p. 311). As
such, I became complicit in embodying the power structures I sought to remove myself from
positioning classmates or other individuals as the passive object of study, while taking a symbolically
colonial role seeking to attain and utilise their knowledge for my own ends (for instance, the selfish
matter of attaining a high grade).

7 Note, however, that this list of correlated beliefs is not exhaustive of the suppositions I developed as
a result of my schooling they are merely the most prominent set.

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